A moment of chiming clarity. This articulate woman, fluent, educated, has an obscured defect. Even I forget about it until it overcomes me and robs me of speech. I have a strange stutter. I don't perseverate on a sound, I don't prolong or sputter. There is only maddening silence, the inability to pull out the word I most want. I can talk around it, but cannot coax it out. Names are especially difficult always, but any key word can get caught in the maelstrom in my brain, stuck floundering just out of reach. I'm sure, now that I have finally put this all together, that I have a horrible expression on my face, that a self conscious person could easily take personally, tainting anything I say or do.
Yes, I am intense. Yes, slow, inattentive people that I have to rely on frustrate me, and make this more likely in their presence. My defect + their hypersensitivity = hurt feelings & judgmental managerial concern. I never realized it before, because these complaints against me always baffle and blindside me. "But, I wasn't angry!" I can protest til I am bluefaced, but that sounds just like defensive excuses. However true.
Now, I think I get it. Now, I think I can head off further "little problems." This is not an excuse, it's quite real. Not an emotional hash, although there is an emotional component. But a physical/brain disability that is explicable. I can no more control my face at these moments than an asthmatic having an attack can "just breathe and don't panic." Ever had an asthma attack? I have, long ago. Everyone told me to calm down and breathe. Well, if I could have taken an easy breath, I could have calmed down. Like telling someone having a seizure to just control themself.
Not residual crap from my father's abuse, save as a sort of PTSD that left a little hole in my brain that crap falls through now and then. This makes me feel so much better, I knew I wasn't malicious, but I just couldn't figure out what was going wrong. This is a condition to be coped with, this is understandable.
8 comments:
Martha has that, too. It can be awfully frustrating, since lots of people have never knowingly encountered it, and of course interpret it as signifying socially (since we social critters basically interpret everything as signifying socially :->)
Ditto! I am there with you 100% ... always with the unintentional hurting of the feelings of some poor soul near me.
Moira, who worked with me in this situation, said this:
"Huh. I knew this about you as soon as I saw it. Never gave it any conscious thought. And absolutely, is misread by most. I saw it several times, working with you: the stutter, and the reaction. May help immensely, to put it forth immediately."
(Thanks friend, hope you don't mind my adding your words here.)
(o)
Dale,
Please tell Martha I understand, thank you for telling me this.
I have a feeling I do this too, not often, but when you described it it was familiar...
Your face reads as extremely frustrated, easily misinterpreted as anger. What you're able to say carries the tone, too. Your body language caps the whole thing off. I think you feel the need to move at these times? Heh, well, we were always in a hurry during those times.
Regardless, your body tenses up; your movements are quick and jerky, and you do a thing, not sure how to describe it. A pushing away, a washing-of-hands type gesture (figuratively, not literally). You tend to leave the immediate area directly afterwards.
All of this, especially in a community where everybody is "nice", reads as an exceptional display of anger.
Again, this is what I saw on occassion while we were working together, so is situational, but that is the very situation that is in question.
I often wonder why I never misinterpreted you. Accomplished body language reader from long practice, perhaps? A person who knows what rage looks like won't mistake it in a frustrated/irritated person.
I bothered to know you, felt an immediate kinship; that may have helped.
Moira,
Oh, bless you and your observational powers. You also actually listened to what I said, and took me at my word, never assumed malice in me. Kinship most potent, always, yes.
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